Vice President Joe Biden praised the National Institutes of Health Tuesday, despite the agency’s record spending of tax dollars to study such topics as teaching Chinese meditation techniques to cocaine addicts and “hookah” smoking among college students in Jordan.

“I love how our opponents have nitpicked some of the research money that we have given to NIH. It reflects that they know nothing about science,” Biden said in announcing a report about the $100 billion from the stimulus package being spent on energy, science and health research.

“In the National Institutes of Health, we have one of the greatest assemblages of doctors and scientists in the world,” Biden said. “Through the Recovery Act, we’re giving them the tools to make the most profound innovation of all: improving and extending health and human life, while bringing down the cost in medicine.”

CNSNews.com has reported in recent months that the NIH has funded various grants on unusual studies such as $60,000 to study Hookah smoking among Jordanian college students; $314,613 to study a supposed increase in family violence after viewing of NFL games; $1.4 million to study the “social milieu” of male prostitutes in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi; $181,406 to study the sex drive of Japanese quail and $410,624 on the aforementioned study, which involved teaching Chinese meditation to cocaine addicts.

Specific to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, meanwhile, the NIH spent $363,760 to promote the economic stimulus. The NIH paid Palladian Partners Inc., of Silver Spring, Md., to promote the good things being done with stimulus money by the NIH, according to an oversight report issued by the offices of Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).

I’m glad we’ve apparently cured cancer, cured heart disease, and built a source of cheap, abundant energy so that we can move on to the items tied at 4,835,634th on the science priority list: Gay prostitutes in Vietnam and Japanese quail. But, if you have a problem with this, well, you know, you must just be one of those darn right-wingers who hates science.

The truth is that liberals like Biden approach science in the same way they approach entertainment, journalism, and education: Their goal is to corrupt it, subvert it, and turn it to their ends to promote liberalism — and if a little actual work gets done in the process, well, that’s fine, too.